A Is for Amandine: A List for Beginners

By ANNE MENDELSON

Published: May 14, 2008

HAVE children suddenly developed a passionate longing to cook? Or are adults just more determined to shepherd their young into the kitchen?

Not so long ago, children learned just from being around grown-ups. So why do food professionals now see them as a special class of pupils whose needs must be met? Could it be the would-be teachers who need a captive audience?

Such ambiguities of purpose have hovered around children's cookbooks since their 19th-century beginnings.

Books that play to children's cravings compromise adults' standing as adults, like Elizabeth Stansbury Kirkland's popular 1877 ''Six Little Cooks,'' which was overwhelmingly given over to cakes, candies and puddings.

If, on the other hand, a book makes everything revolve around the miracle powers of broccoli, it may step over the line from teaching to force-feeding.

And this isn't to mention the inescapable fact that sane adults wouldn't dream of just leaving a child and a cookbook alone together in the kitchen. Anyone who writes a children's cookbook is also writing a parents' cookbook, whether it is spelled out or not.

Small wonder that the tone of these books is often the worst thing about them, even when the material has considerable merit. The genre is littered with unfortunate examples of cuteness, from the elephantine whimsy of the anthropomorphized ''Kitchen People'' (''Sauce Pan,'' ''Big Iron Pot,'' etc.) in Jane Eayre Fryer's 1912 ''Mary Frances Cook Book'' to Alice Waters's maladroit impersonation of her 7-year-old daughter in the 1992 ''Fanny at Chez Panisse'' (''The inside of my mom's mouth knows how everything at Chez Panisse is supposed to taste'').

The difficulty of the task hasn't stopped an ever-growing stream of contenders from major publishers and, with less visibility, educational houses. Then there are the marketers working up tie-in cookbooks to capitalize on success in other media. A small recipe collection (''What's Cooking?'' from Hyperion Books) spawned by last summer's hit movie ''Ratatouille'' was in print almost as soon as the movie was in theaters.

Celebrities of the grown-up food world, from Irma Rombauer (''A Cookbook for Girls and Boys,'' 1946) to Paula Deen (''Paula Deen's My First Cookbook,'' coming next fall from Simon & Schuster) have long been trying their hand -- sometimes honorably, sometimes feebly -- at children's cookbooks. Major food manufacturers and service magazines are perennial contributors to the genre, with the Betty Crocker titles for children perhaps the most durable. The original 1957 ''Betty Crocker's Cook Book for Boys and Girls'' has even been republished in facsimile.

Publishers are always chasing the latest trends, but books geared too closely to them date rapidly. Microwave cooking by the young didn't become the craze that was foreseen when ''Betty Crocker's Boys' and Girls' Microwave Cookbook'' was published in 1992; the ''American Heart Association Kids Cookbook'' of 1993 now appears antediluvian in its happy embrace of margarine and egg substitutes.

Parents and children looking for an intelligible selection of cookbooks will instead find a bewildering miscellany with almost no common denominator.

You'll see works variously addressed to middle-schoolers or children too young to read, invitations to candyland or ''The Greatest Cookies Ever,'' edible science projects, little girls' tea-party books, can-opener compilations that might have stepped out of the year 1952. Some works address parents to the point where the child may feel like an afterthought; some make a noisy show of talking to (or down to) young users. If a putative age range is suggested, it may strike the whole family as wide of the mark.

This doesn't mean that children's cookbooks are a waste of time. Plenty of arguments can be made for putting books into children's hands along with saucepans and spatulas. But some arguments are more in tune with the realities of childhood (and adulthood) than others.

Assuming that you and your children are equally motivated, you should candidly measure their motor skills, ability to conceptualize and patience in the face of deferred gratification (or outright failure) against the demands of cooking at different levels. It's also important to consider who else will be directly participating in any kitchen projects, and how. A child's age and maturity ought to dictate when the grown-ups should run the show while delegating certain tasks to junior subordinates, and when the small fry are ready to attempt an entire recipe with adult back up.

By far the greatest number of children's cookbooks are intended for users in the amorphous territory between the ages of about 8 and 13. (Don't discount the possibility that older children -- say, ones old enough to read Harry Potter -- may get more out of simple recipes in an all-purpose grown-up cookbook than something they perceive as being addressed to babies.) In any case, an adult and child ought to look through any prospective purchase together, with a few guidelines in mind:

Are safety warnings adequate?

Is the overall tone respectful of children? Are motivational and educational agendas (''cooking is cool''; ''calcium builds strong bones'') likely to inspire or annoy your child?

How clear and usable is the recipe format?

Are pictures matched to the level of verbal instruction? (A 10-year-old may feel insulted by picture sequences full of toddlers.)

Do the equipment and ingredients called for match your kitchen and your dietary priorities?

Do you feel the book's usefulness is compromised by brand-name or celebrity author tie-ins?